Senior Member

63 years ago today, one of the last defending battles for the City of Singapore was lost. Tomorrow (63 years ago), the British will surrender the Crown Colony of Singapore to the invading Japanese.

For those celebrating Valentine's Day, remember the other significance of 14th February. After you bring your roses to your love, you could also bring some to the Kranji War Memorial.

For those shooting butterflies in Alexandra Hospital, remember that Today (63 years ago) all the staff and patients at the hospital will be massacred and executed by the invading Japanese Army. A direct consequence of the resistance at Pasir Panjang Ridge.

It is commonly believed that at the outbreak of the Pacific War, Singapore was caught unaware by the Japanese attack through Malaya, with its guns facing the sea. While it is true that Singapore's seaward defences were well developed for the protection of the naval base, landward defence had not been neglected. The question of landward defence was first raised as early as 1918 and this idea of forward defence eventually took the form of "Operation Matador".

This book traces the British defence policy between 1918 and 1941, primarily from a military point of view, but taking into account the political, diplomatic and human factors involved. Based on painstaking research in British archives and his own insights as a Singaporean academic, Ong Chit Chung's illuminating study debunks the myth that the Singapore guns were pointing in the wrong direction and offers an alternative insight into why Malaya and Singapore were captured by the Japanese.​

Senior Member

Nice work hwchoy. :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
It is important for all Singaporean especially the younger geneartion to remember this day, to know what our ancestor have been through the period of 3yrs 8 mths of darkness and tyranny rule.

THE JUNGLE IS NEUTRAL makes The Bridge Over the River Kwai look like a tussle in a schoolyard.

F. SPENCER CHAPMAN, the book's unflappable author, narrates with typical British aplomb an amazing tale of four years spent as a guerrilla in the jungle, haranguing the Japanese in occupied Malaysia.

Traveling sometimes by bicycle and motorcycle, rarely by truck, and mainly in dugouts, on foot, and often on his belly through the jungle muck, Chapman recruits sympathetic Chinese, Malays, Tamils, and Sakai tribesman into an irregular corps of jungle fighters. Their mission: to harass the Japanese in any way possible. In riveting scenes, they blow up bridges, cut communication lines, and affix plasticine to troop-filled trucks idling by the road. They build mines by stuffing bamboo with gelignite. They throw grenades and disappear into the jungle, their faces darkened with carbon, their tommy guns wrapped in tape so as not to reflect the moonlight.

And when he is not battling the Japanese, or escaping from their prisons, he is fighting the jungle's incessant rain, wild tigers, unfriendly tribesmen, leeches, and undergrowth so thick it can take four hours to walk a mile.

I think Batavia fell a few months later. Do read the Operation Matador book. Not many people (especially from the west) realise that the first Japanese attack of the Pacific War was not against Pearl Harbour, but actually the landing in southern Thailand and Malaya. Due to the dateline, Pearl Harbour occurred on Dec 7th but we are already Dec 8th. The landing took place some hours before Pearl Harbour.

I thought you are Korean. Or perhaps you are Korean Indonesian? :think:

that was why Operation Matador failed. The British knew that the Japs would probably land around Pattani as well as Kuantan, but obviously BEFORE they land the Brits could not go in there and set up the defences. By the time they actually land (and thus a state of war exists) it is TOO LATE!